


We Carry Each Other

by marauders_groupie



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 08:32:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6187567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marauders_groupie/pseuds/marauders_groupie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy Blake has had various accidents throughout his life. However, he could have expected those to happen. But what he wasn't expecting was to get accidentally matched up as roommates with Clarke Griffin. </p><p>Or: Five moments in which Bellamy Blake slowly falls for Clarke Griffin.</p><p>*</p><p>
  <b>Winner of Bellarke Fanfiction Awards 2016 Best Fluff Oneshot.</b>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Carry Each Other

**Author's Note:**

> I received the following prompt: "we accidentally got matched up as roommates" AU. I just really like the idea of them accidentally being stuck in the same college dorm room for the year and kind of being perfect roommates ".
> 
> I am sorry it took me so long to write it, but I wanted to do it justice. 
> 
> The title is from Walk The Moon - Different Colors because I need some happy in my life. 
> 
> Enjoy!

I.

Bellamy Blake has had various accidents throughout his life. When he was five, his neighbor’s cat scratched him bad enough for the scar to still be visible fourteen years later. When he was ten, he broke his arm falling from a tree – saving that same cat. However, he could have expected those to happen.

But what he wasn’t expecting was to get accidentally matched up as roommates with Clarke Griffin.

“Let’s blame our parents.”

Bellamy looks at the girl, frizzy blonde hair, a faded Coca Cola T-shirt and a wry smile as she stands in the doorway to their room. He’s shocked whereas she’s just amused.

“For giving us unisex names,” she clarifies, looking at him like she’s just waiting for him to catch up. “You know, that got us into this situation?”

Two more seconds and she’s gonna think he’s incapable of stringing a sentence so Bellamy clears his throat, offering, “You want me to talk to the RA?”

The girl – Clarke (18, art major, knows how to say _fuck the patriarchy_ in 5 different languages and loves coffee – and that’s only what she told him in their email correspondence) blinks at him.

“Come on, Bellamy. You said you’d smash the patriarchy with me. You’re not seriously expecting me to find a new partner?”

And that, in short, is how Clarke Griffin begins to worm her way into Bellamy’s heart.

 

II.

 

“All I’m saying is, you wouldn’t be judging me so hard if you knew what an asshole professor Wallace is.”

That’s the first thing Bellamy hears when he finally gets back to their room after the longest day (being a history major is hard, working at a coffee shop is harder just because it’s fucking tedious), only to find Clarke sitting on the floor between their beds, cocooned in a blanket, wearing a pair of bright pink fluffy socks and cradling a bottle of vodka to her chest with the saddest pout he’s ever seen.

“I’m not judging you,” he replies, dropping the books on his bed and taking a seat on the floor next to Clarke and her ever-growing pile of clothes. She’s messy as hell, but usually keeps it to her side of the room. “I just want in.”

It’s Friday, he doesn’t have any plans and getting drunk sounds like a really good idea. Plus, it’s Clarke. Not that he trusts her not to draw dicks on his face with a Sharpie while he sleeps, but. She’s pretty safe as far as the other freshmen go.

That seems to cheer her up and she offers him the bottle, beaming. “Oh, good. I thought you had plans.”

It’s borderline ridiculous, sitting on the floor with her and taking swigs straight from the bottle. They’re not even legally allowed to drink but when he asks Clarke how she got it, her demeanor changes in a second and it’s downright mob boss-y when she says,

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

Bellamy laughs but she keeps a straight face. “Alright, Corleone, chill out.”

“I’m serious, Bellamy.” She leans forward, eyes wide and serious, just close enough for him to detect a faint smell of paint. “I’m gonna rip the head off my horse plushie and put it in your bed.”

“Yeah, if you’re able to find it first.”

She frowns at him and slurs, “You’re mean.”  

Apparently, drunk Clarke likes to wrap a blanket around her neck like a cape and run around the room screaming “Bellamy Blake is a meanie” while Bellamy laughs and laughs, forgetting that it’s been a long time since he’d last done that.

 

III.

  
“You should clean up your part of the room, Clarke. I mean it.”

It looks like a bomb dropped on her bed, and in it shrapnels in the form of crumpled paper, stray socks and who knows what else.

“I don’t see the problem,” she retorts, sinking to her knees to try and find her shirt under the bed. Bellamy just watches her struggling, amused. “It’s creative chaos. I’m creative. It makes sense.”

He gives her another ten minutes, knowing full well that he’s going to be late to class but seeing Clarke getting frenzied with each passing minute is fun and he’s not going to skip that.

Finally, she huffs and gives up, her neat braid going completely disheveled as she surveys the room with her hands on her hips.

“I need a clean shirt.”

“Don’t you have any?”

“Nope,” she says, popping the p audibly. “All of them have paint stains.”

It doesn’t surprise him like it should. Clarke is – _unusual_ when she paints. Unusual meaning that she forgets about the world for hours on end, ignoring all the other proceedings as her brush fills the canvas with abstract images. She’ll often ask Bellamy what he thinks of it, but he doesn’t know how to make sense of what he’s seeing. It’s probably good, but he’s not an expert.

So the fact that she’s run out of clean shirts doesn’t surprise him one bit and Bellamy laughs, shaking his head as he opens his drawer and gets out one of his.

“Here, have mine.”

Clarke looks at him like she thinks he’s messing with her for a second but he just nods, grinning when she slides her hands into the sleeves and pouts.

“It’s too big.”

Seeing Clarke – his very platonic friend who gets him vodka when shit gets rough and offers to fight professor Sydney for giving him a B when he should’ve gotten an A – in his shirt probably shouldn’t make Bellamy’s heart flip, but.

It still does and he reaches for the sleeves, rolling them up to her elbows. It’s still too big but it looks better.

Clarke takes a look in the mirror, beaming at herself and then turning around so she can full on beam at Bellamy. For a second there, he’s not able to see anything but the golden hair and the pearly smile, reminding him of memories he couldn’t possibly have.

It’s just – he sees her and thinks about childhood, blue skies, bicycle rides and scraped knees. He sees a piece of history, right there in this girl that wants to be his friend. And more than that, Bellamy feels like he’s better than just a kid from the wrong side of the tracks, living in a run-down house and feeling guilty for being relieved that they live better now that their mom is gone.

He looks at Clarke and forgets about all the shit he’s been through.

“I think this warrants a selfie,” she exclaims, digging through the pile on her bed to get her phone out. Bellamy groans, but she still pulls him in for a photo, cheek to cheek. “Come on, grump, smile!”

It’s really not that hard to do it.

Later on, he’s sitting in his preindustrial history class and scrolling down his Facebook newsfeed. Monty and Jasper (probably got high and) made a robot, Miller liked Manchester United’s official page, and Octavia posted a photo of her and Atom with shovels. For whatever reason that might be.

It’s not until he’s down to Roma’s announcement that she’s moving to Rome (“Please, please, no puns.”) that his phone vibrates and he sees that he’s been tagged in a photo Clarke Griffin posted.

It’s the two of them, her smile is taking up half the screen, all teeth, and Bellamy’s looking at her, fond.

The caption reads: _best roommate ever_ , and Bellamy really tries hard to water down the joy he feels but when he steps out onto the quad, smile is still plastered across his face. 

 

IV.

 

It’s not always sunshine and puppies. Some days, it’s Clarke sneaking into their room on the tips of her toes, looking world weary and falling to her bed face-first. By now, Bellamy knows that it’s best to let her be and huff it out, because she turns on her side soon enough and starts posing questions.

“What’s your family like?”

It’s a question he would have bristled at if it wasn’t for Clarke asking it. This way, he just glances at her, sees her doing her best to look like she’s not tired and collapsing under the weight of things she hinted at sometimes, and he wants to help.

“Well, you know Octavia already.”

Clarke and Octavia met when he was Skyping her, during which Clarke just sat behind him on his bed, got a carton of Ben & Jerry’s (“Mint chocolate chip is the best, fuck you, Blake.”) and monopolized the conversation when she realized that she and Octavia watch the same shows and love making fun of Bellamy.

“Our mom was – a lot of things. She did her best, worked hard but she couldn’t take it. She died three years ago and we moved in with our aunt Indra.”

Clarke nods, solemn. Her cheek is still pressed to the pillow, dark circles extinguishing the light in her eyes.  “What was your childhood like, then?”

“It wasn’t all crap,” Bellamy replies, smiling. “Octavia was always a brat, always came home with scraped knees even though I tried my best to protect her. She never needed me but I wanted to help. I like to think that she was happy.”

“And you?”

“I did just fine.”

Clarke frowns at him as silence drops heavily between them. And then, she gets up from her bed, crosses the distance and plops down right next to him. They have twin beds so they don’t fit, not quite, but she does her best to snuggle against his side.

“What’s up, Clarke?” Bellamy asks, winding an arm around her and trying to be as benevolent as possible. She’s looking up at him and there’s something inexplicable in her gaze.

“I think you did great. I think you’re amazing.”

This time he can’t stop himself and he presses a kiss to the top of her head, strawberries and paint, but she doesn’t seem to mind. Instead, she just snuggles closer, dropping one leg over his and melting into him until all the lines between them blur.  

It takes her a while but she finally croaks out, “It’s my dad’s death anniversary today.”

Dread settles into the pit of his stomach and now he knows why she walked in like the world could be ending but she wouldn’t know the difference because hers ended too many times to count.

 

V.

 

In April, Raven doesn’t give them a choice. She just texts them, tells them to be ready for the beach in an hour and it’s Clarke who shakes Bellamy awake, peering at him from above with those electric blue eyes.

“We’re going to the beach!”

Going to university in California has its strengths, Bellamy supposes, but he still groans as she tugs him up to his feet, turning from previous night’s sad and curled up into herself to the bubbly Clarke he knows during the moments she allows herself to forget.

For the next hour, she whirls around the room, throwing enough sunscreen into her bag to last them a year, and frowning at Bellamy when he teases her. There’s a splotch of white on the tip of her nose and he flicks it with his finger, laughs when she wrinkles it.

“You’re the worst.”

“Come on, Griffin, you love me,” he shoots back, turning around to finish the playlist she’s instructed him to make. There’s happy songs on there, dragged from her iTunes and it almost tells him something important about her, but Bellamy can’t wrap his head around Johnny Cash, Walk the Moon and Taylor Swift.

It’s just Clarke. It makes sense.

When the hour passes and he turns around, phone full of songs that are gonna keep them alive throughout the day, Clarke is leaning on the door, observing him.

The first thing he notices is how happy she looks, fucking _beaming_ in frayed shorts, that old Coca Cola shirt, hair in a bun and looking like she doesn’t have a care in the world.

“You ready?” she asks, outstretching her hand. He takes it because he doesn’t know what else to do, ignores the way butterflies stir in his stomach when she laces their fingers together like it’s nothing at all. Like his soul isn’t ready to implode in his chest.

He smiles at her when she looks up, fixing the bag strap on her other shoulder, as they avoid the crowd in the hallway, make their way out to the parking lot.

It’s going to be a warm and beautiful day, but Bellamy isn’t sure that it has anything to do with the temperature. It has everything to do with the girl standing next to him as Monty shoves Jasper into Raven’s Rover, the girl rolling her eyes and waving them over.

“Let’s go!”

They are young and invincible, with their heads thrown back in laughter, feet propped up in each other’s laps and on the dashboard. Jasper is handed the aux cord and they all groan in unison, but it’s comfortable.

It’s comfortable how close Clarke is pressed to him, skin to skin in shorts, warm like the sun batting at them mercilessly through the windshield. Raven keeps looking at them in the rearview and Bellamy tries to avoid the conversation but she mouths ‘later’ and he knows he’ll never drive her away.

After everything that’s happened with Finn – well, it makes sense. Clarke has become fiercely protective of Raven and vice versa. They are two women army, enough to stop or start wars all on their own.

“What’s up, Bellamy?” Clarke knocks her knee against his, question in her eyes.

And Bellamy is young and afraid and this girl shines like the sun, sitting next to him, so he just takes her legs, puts them in his lap and traces the ink marks on her battered old chucks.

“You couldn’t even save your shoes from paint, huh?” he asks when he finds a blue stain on the fabric near the toes. Clarke swats at his arm, pretending to be mad, but she leans against him all the same.

“There’s no salvation from the things we love.”

He doesn’t know when she got that wise and he’s about to reply something smart when Raven pulls over to the beach, ordering them to get out before she throws them out single-handedly. Monty and Bellamy are on the towel and snacks duty, carrying portable fridges full of wine coolers down to the beach, while the other three putter around the stereo.

“Miller is sorry he couldn’t make it,” Bellamy tells Monty, the other boy’s cheeks going pink prettily. Bellamy knows what Miller sees in Monty. It’s hard not to see it, that sort of kindness has a magnetic pull.

“It’s fine. We’ve got a date on Wednesday anyways.”

The only thing that stops Bellamy from laughing is a sudden explosion from the Rover and then music that echoes across the empty beach. Sea and sand are the only things Bellamy sees for miles and then it’s Clarke and Jasper running down to them, each of them tackling their respective best friend.

Clarke grins when Bellamy falls on his ass in the sand, trying to be angry but failing to do so. He’s not sure what is going on but today is just weirdly wonderful so he decides to go with it. He can overanalyze things tomorrow.

Today, Clarke is poking him in the ribs, trying to tickle him, and he rolls them over, laughs when she screams gleefully. “No, Bell! No, don’t, I’m not even – ticklish!”

The last word comes out as another scream and he finally gives up, rolls over on his side. Raven walks around them, shooting them pitying glances, but they stay like that for a while. He’s not sure who reaches for the other’s hand first, but in the end it doesn’t matter.

He and Clarke Griffin are lying in sand and staring at the clearest blue sky.

“We’re gonna be fine, aren’t we?” she asks, quiet. In the background, Bon Jovi is reclaiming his life.

“It’s us, Clarke. We’re always going to be fine.”

Well, maybe they are nineteen but that day they feel like they are older and younger and absolutely infinite. Raven gets on Clarke’s shoulders in the water when they run into it and splashes around, cackling.

Jasper shakes off on Monty when he gets out of the water and Bellamy eyes Clarke warily when she comes out, dripping wet in her swimsuit and with a grin that only means danger.

“Don’t you dare,” he threatens, backing away as far as possible in his – still dry – board shorts. Raven is shouting something but he doesn’t know what, it’s kind of a standstill.

Clarke launches herself at him, gets him completely wet and Bellamy can’t even say he cares.

Later on, it’s Raven who comes to sit next to him as Clarke dances with Jasper and Monty, careless of the world around her. It’s just the five of them and the beach, but the stars still make it feel like the whole universe cares what these kids do.

Bellamy hands her a beaker full of Monty’s moonshine, teasing, “Couldn’t even spring for solo cups?”

Raven rolls her eyes at him and takes a sip petulantly, enduring two seconds before she finally cracks and tilts her head at him.

“Griffin, huh?”

Bellamy shrugs, figuring that it’s obvious to everyone – especially with the way his eyes find her even in the most crowded of places. Always Clarke. And she always smiles back.

“Don’t hurt her. She’s had enough of that.”

The rawness in Raven’s voice chills him to the bone but he understands. “I’m not going to.”

“Good.”

They down the liquids in their beakers, dropping them to the side before they’re pulled into the three person dance party. Jasper dances like he’s seventy, Monty can actually dance and Clarke doesn’t do anything but jump, smile stretching from ear to ear.

When the sun goes down and their hearts still soar, Bellamy supposes he shouldn’t be surprised that Clarke wraps herself around Raven.

“You’re cold, Raven,” she pouts, alcohol slurring her speech. “Why are you so cold?”

Raven grins at her, pats her head tamely. “Wine coolers, babe.” And then, eyes flicking to Bellamy, she whispers something in Clarke’s ear.

“That’s amazing!”

“I _am_ amazing,” Raven grants, grinning when the blonde scrambles off her lap and totters towards Bellamy.

Clarke doesn’t even ask, she just wraps her arms around his chest, shoving her hands into the pockets of his varsity jacket. Where she presses her cheek on his back, he feels familiar warmth.

“Better?”

She hums in confirmation and they stay like that for as long as Jasper finds the energy to dance around the makeshift fire. For as long Monty finds the patience for his best friend’s antics. For as long as Raven leans back in the chair and looks at all of them with softness Bellamy hadn’t seen in her ever since Finn happened.

This day is like their pocket in space-time, tiny, improbable, almost impossible, but still here. Just like they’re still here.

Clarke climbs into the backseat after Bellamy, stopping only when she’s curled up in his lap and bullied him to snuggle her closer. She pets his hair drunkenly, repeating, “You’re my fave, Bellamy. You’re my fave.”

“You’re my fave, too, Clarke,” he whispers, nuzzling her cheek.

“Your curls are so soft.” She tangles her fingers into them, tugs a little, enough to make Bellamy’s heart ache. “And your freckles look like constellations.” A beat of silence between them, even while the music plays on the stereo. “I’m going to paint you someday.”

Her eyes are a little glassy but Bellamy’s heart does a somersault in his chest all the same.

Their room is cold, empty without the sunshine and the laughter, but Clarke’s arms open for him to come closer. The stars are high in the night sky, glistening off the window and the promise of a summer hangs in the air.

She smells like that sort of tired after a day on the beach; sunscreen and sand, warmth that’s found a home in her skin, happy kind of sad. And when she finally kisses him, small and tender movements like she’s almost afraid, Bellamy sighs into her mouth, presses her closer and decides to give in.

“Are you sure?” he asks when she’s moved away, her forehead leaning against his, fingertips searing hot against the skin of his neck. He can barely look at her, red and swollen lips that taste like salt, eyelids closed in a bliss.

“God, Bellamy, I was never more sure of anything in my life.”

They stay together that night, giggling long into the night, Clarke’s voice hushed by the fabric of his shirt. Their skin is sticky from the sunscreen and warm from the heat, so Bellamy swats Clarke’s hand when she pokes him in the chest with her index finger.

“You’re sticky,” she accuses.

“And you’re drunk.”

She groans, turning her back on him. It lasts a second and then she’s back, her head on his pillow, so close their noses brush. “Well, nobody’s perfect.”

In the morning, he wakes up with her hair in his mouth, coconut and strawberries, and she still tastes like salt when she kisses him sloppily. The day at the beach is done, but she’s got sunshine woven in her skin when she smiles at him, and Bellamy knows they’re going to be alright.

They’ve got miles to go, but they can do it.

**Author's Note:**

> That's it! Thank you all for reading, and if you liked it - please let me know. Kudos and comments are love, kudos and comments are life. :))
> 
> p. s. i can also be tracked down on [tumblr](http://marauders-groupie.tumblr.com).


End file.
